Phase-change materials (PCMs) have a remarkable potential for use as efficient energy storage means. However, their poor response rates during energy storage and retrieval modes require the use of heat transfer enhancers to combat these limitations. This research marks the first attempt to explore the potential of dimple-shaped fins for the enhancement of PCM thermal response in a shell-and-tube casing. Fin arrays with different dimensions and diverse distribution patterns were designed and studied to assess the effect of modifying the fin geometric parameters and distribution patterns in various spatial zones of the physical domain. The results indicate that increasing the number of dimple fins in the range of 8–32 results in faster heat storage rates by up to 8.7% faster than they would be without the dimple fins. Further improvements of approximately 1.4, 1.2, 1.1, and 1.0% can be obtained by optimizing the position of the first fin section, the spacing between other fin sections, the fin spacing based on the aromatic algorithm, and the use of the staggered fin distribution. The heat storage rate is improved by almost 12% for the best case compared with that of the no-fin case.
This research is devoted to investigating the thermal buckling analysis behaviour of laminated composite plates subjected to uniform and non-uniform temperature fields by applying an analytical model based on a refined plate theory (RPT) with five unknown independent variables. The theory accounts for the parabolic distribution of the transverse shear strains through the plate thickness and satisfies the zero-traction boundary condition on the surface without using shear correction factors; hence a shear correction factor is not required. The governing differential equations and associated boundary conditions are derived by using the virtual work principle and solved via Navier-type analytical procedure to obtain critica
... Show MoreThis paper aims to identify the approaches used in assessment the credit applications by Iraqi banks, as well as which approach is most used. It also attempted to link these approaches with reduction of credit default and banks’ efficiency particularly for the Gulf Commercial Bank. The paper found that the Gulf Bank widely relies on the method of Judgment Approach for assessment the credit applications in order to select the best of them with low risk of default. In addition, the paper found that the method of Judgment Approach was very important for the Gulf Bank and it driven in reduction the ratio of credit default as percentage of total credit. However, it is important to say that the adoption of statistical approaches for
... Show MoreThe structure of the interrogation process in cross-examinations is said to be diverse and complex in terms of question-response typology. This is because the counsel has to extract truth from an opposing party’s witness whose views are expected to advocate that party's views regarding the case. Accordingly, the study which is basically quantitative in nature aims to investigate what the examining party intends to obtain out of these questions and which of these questions are the most prevalently used. It also aims to measure the amount of cooperativity in witnesses' responses. Accordingly, three transcripts of cross-examination have been analyzed, using a pragmatically-oriented approach. The approach draws on Stenstorm (1984) and Arch
... Show MoreA total of 116 males with primary infertility and 32 fertile males (normozoospermia;
NOR) were studied to evaluate parameters of seminal fluid analysis. Based on WHO criteria
of 2010 for general seminal fluid analysis, the patients were distributed into three groups: 32
azoospermic (AZO), 40 oligozoospermic (OLI) and 44 asthenozoospermic (AST) patients.
AZO and OLI patients and NOR shared an approximated mean of seminal fluid volume (2.25,
2.75 and 2.50 ml, respectively), while it was significantly increased (3.58 ml) in AST patients.
In NOR men, the spermatozoa concentration was 65.13 x 10
6
spermatozoa/ml, while it was
significantly decreased in AST (51.42 x 10
6
spermatozoa/ml) and OLI (5.58 x 10
Compression for color image is now necessary for transmission and storage in the data bases since the color gives a pleasing nature and natural for any object, so three composite techniques based color image compression is implemented to achieve image with high compression, no loss in original image, better performance and good image quality. These techniques are composite stationary wavelet technique (S), composite wavelet technique (W) and composite multi-wavelet technique (M). For the high energy sub-band of the 3rd level of each composite transform in each composite technique, the compression parameters are calculated. The best composite transform among the 27 types is the three levels of multi-wavelet
... Show MoreAudio classification is the process to classify different audio types according to contents. It is implemented in a large variety of real world problems, all classification applications allowed the target subjects to be viewed as a specific type of audio and hence, there is a variety in the audio types and every type has to be treatedcarefully according to its significant properties.Feature extraction is an important process for audio classification. This workintroduces several sets of features according to the type, two types of audio (datasets) were studied. Two different features sets are proposed: (i) firstorder gradient feature vector, and (ii) Local roughness feature vector, the experimentsshowed that the results are competitive to
... Show MoreIn this research we will present the signature as a key to the biometric authentication technique. I shall use moment invariants as a tool to make a decision about any signature which is belonging to the certain person or not. Eighteen voluntaries give 108 signatures as a sample to test the proposed system, six samples belong to each person were taken. Moment invariants are used to build a feature vector stored in this system. Euclidean distance measure used to compute the distance between the specific signatures of persons saved in this system and with new sample acquired to same persons for making decision about the new signature. Each signature is acquired by scanner in jpg format with 300DPI. Matlab used to implement this system.